The Female and the Feminine in Dracula and The Woman in White.

The female and the feminine in Dracula and The Woman in White.

‘Different though the sexes are, they intermix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female like-ness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what is above. Of the complications and confusions which thus result every one has had experience’

  One must assess the distinction between the biology and psychology of gender; an individual’s gender is distinguished by their dress and outward appearances. It is not until the reader and other characters get a closer look to discover that often their psychology and personality have characteristics of both genders- it is in this way that many characters in Dracula and The Woman in White transgress traditional gender roles.

What separates the masculine and the male, the feminine and the female in these two novels and how characters, male and female often move about between them.

  Jonathan Harker declares the gender of the three vampiric women in Dracula’s castle; they are clearly ‘ladies by their dress and manner’ this assumption is soon proven wrong, he hears ‘the churning sound of [one of the women’s]  tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and [he] could feel the hot breath on [his] neck.’  Like a fire-breathing dragon she asserts her masculine power over him. This strong presence causes Harker to faint, the horror ‘overcame [him] and [he] sank down into unconsciousness’; this can be contrasted to Mina who is ‘not of a fainting disposition’. By fainting Harker’s response corresponds with a typically feminine role to pass out, the shock of his experience proving too much for him. He expresses that ‘there was something about them that made me feel uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips’ This is an example of fear versus desire that is common throughout the two novels to define masculinity and femininity, it would normally be the powerful male asserting his power and the weaker, passive female desiring him. Harker here takes on a passive role; and the masculine female takes control of the feminine male. This mechanical likeness of the ‘churning tongue’ removes any emotional connections to a woman the reader may have these women are no longer feminine, or even female, they transgress so completely out of femininity that they cannot even be classed as males, perhaps only as ‘monsters’.

   Tori Moi in Sexual/ Textual Politics coins the term ‘monster woman’ not as a reference to the literal supernatural monster of Gothic fiction but to describe the ‘new woman’ that Mina Harker and Marian Halcombe can be likened to. This ‘monster woman’ ‘is the woman who refuses to be selfless, acts on her own initiative, who has a story to tell – in short, a woman who rejects the submissive role patriarchy has reserved for her’ by remaining a single woman and taking an active role in the discovery of the identity of the mysterious woman in white, Marian does exactly this. Moi goes on to explain that ‘the duplicitous woman is opaque to man, whose mind will not let itself be penetrated by the phallic probings of masculine thought’.

Dracula, by using feminine terms to describe him – is not the masculine, phallic power Moi describes, that is more like Sir Percival, of even Count Fosco. Although Dracula invades Mina’s mind he does not control it, Dracula’s femininity allows Mina and the men to use it to their advantage. As easily as Dracula changes from old to young, he shifts from masculine to feminine. Like ‘a child forcing a kitten’s nose into a saucer of milk’ he maternally feeds his blood to Mina, although it has darker undertones, this image comes across as feminine; as if he is feeding Mina for her own good. Conversely Dracula has the potential to be a powerful and dangerous man, his eyes ‘blazed with a sort of demonic fury’ at the sight of Harker’s blood on his chin, he uncontrollably ‘[makes] a grab at’ Harker’s throat. Dracula is the only character who is able to change so quickly from feminine to masculine without any noticeable changing process; possibly because he lacks humanity he therefore lacks any gender stability.

 The male desire to assist a damsel in distress throughout Dracula and The Woman in White.

Hartright, upon his first meeting with Anne notes that ‘the loneliness and helplessness’ of her affected him, ‘the natural impulse to assist her and to spare her, got the better of the judgment, the caution, the worldly tact, which an older, wiser and colder man might have summoned to help him in this strange emergency’. Reason and rationality are overridden by the desire to help the weak, and the helpless; here are conflicting masculine impulses. Hartight acts upon his urge to be ‘the knight in shining armour’ that many of the male characters in the novels aspire to be. Even Mina, one of the stronger female characters, is subjected to this impulse, the men around her feel the need to protect her and do not consider that she may, in fact be able to protect herself. Dr Seward notes that ‘I must be careful not to frighten her’ immediately making the assumption that Mina conforms to the typical feminine role as Lucy does and requires, for her health, censorship. He later states ‘Mrs Harker is better out of it. Things are quite bad enough for us, all men of the world, and who have been in many tight places in our time; but it is no place for a woman’ despite her efforts to act like a man and to be part of the group as an equal, Mina’s womanly physical appearance blind the men into treating her and protecting her as a woman should be.

     In her diary, Mina does not separate the masculine and feminine but instead distinguishes between good and evil, light and dark. As she looks towards Whitby Abbey Mina sees Lucy, a ‘half reclining figure, snowy white’ and a ‘man or beast’ ‘something dark’ leaning over her in a domineering fashion. This is reminiscent of Harker’s experience in Dracula’s castle – a powerful, overbearing masculine force, bent over a powerless body - and has highly charged sexual connotations; Count Dracula is forcing himself upon her as the three women forced themselves upon Harker.  The snowy white figure of Lucy agrees with the general view that white signifies innocence. In The Woman in White the reader is in someway led to reassess such connotations – once we learn that the strange figure of the woman in white has escaped from and asylum we make links with the whiteness of an asylum, of medicinal sterility of straight jackets and padded walls. At this moment in time, for the reader and for Hartright these connotations overpower that of innocence, so as to make him become suspicious or even frightened. The reassessment of the traditional symbolic meaning of white happens in Dracula too where whiteness/ paleness instead takes on the negative meaning of bloodlessness.

     The uses of light and dark in The Woman in White draw contrasts between the women, rather than between good and evil. Anne is too white; her skin is deathly pale, and her strange habit, commented and teased by Mrs Clements of wearing all white makes other characters wary of her.  Hartright describes her as having ‘a colourless, youthful face, meagre and sharp to look at about the cheeks and chin; large, grave, wistfully attentive eyes; nervous uncertain lips; and a light hair of a pale, brownish-yellow hue’. She comes across as too weak, and too fragile; this is an extreme of the Victorian female gender role. Collins could be commenting on the position of women in society and if one should take their position as a weak passive female too far they must prepare for negative consequences. This can be compared to Hartright’s description of Laura Fairlie; she is light, beautiful, ‘her hair is of so faint and pale a brown- not glossy- that it nearly melts, here and there into the shadow of the hat’ and her eyes ‘of that soft, limpid, turquoise blue, so often sung by the poets, so seldom seen in real life’ the features damned in Anne are praised in Laura; this description could be foreshadowing her downfall when mistaken as Anne. When Laura loses her identity and becomes Anne catherick she too becomes ghostly white – brought upon by the asylum. The dark, ugly Marian has more character, she is unusual and intriguing to the reader, Hartright’s first impression of Marian is ‘the lady is dark’, he describes ‘the lady’s complexion was almost swarthy, and the dark down on her upper lip was almost a moustache. She had a large, firm, masculine mouth and jaw; prominent, resolute, piercing eyes’ This is a very masculine description and unlike Mina, who has to fight against her feminine appearance to prove her worth as her own person, Marian is immediately confided in by Hartright, it could be argued with help from her not-so fragile appearance, about his strange journey to Limmeridge house.

       Harvey Peter Sucksmith, in the introduction to the Oxford University Press publication of The Woman in White explains the reason for, in his view, one hero and two heroines; he draws a parallel between Hartright and the author’s own personal experiences - ‘we can see now why there are two heroines inn the novel but only one hero, for Collins achieves psychological validity with this trio by representing in Victorian terms what have been called the anima and the shadow, that is, here, the Victorian male’s idealised image of women together with much of a contradictory nature that is excluded from that ideal. Collins, the man who later lived with two women, depicts a hero who experiences the dual nature of women’. Sucksmith suggests that Collins simplifies woman into two forms for the sake of clarity for the reader. This can be taken that in this case one woman with both attributes would not be effective; that men may be able to freely display both sides of their nature, but women, in order to make sense in a Victorian novel and in society, must be separated into two characters. Stoker on the other hand, creates Mina of whom Helsing exclaims has a ‘man’s brain – a brain that a man should have were he much gifted- and a woman’s heart’ This perhaps is a better image of the ideal ‘new’ woman who happily displays feminine and masculine attributes.

    The mouth is often described as both cruel and voluptuous in Dracula; ‘all three [vampire women] had brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips.’ These images of pearls and rubies connote richness and abundance, as if Harker is attempting to dress up the bad, masculine imagery in feminine jewellery. The word voluptuous is often repeated by Stoker, and becomes a word loaded with dark, sexual connotations. Lucy, at the beginning of the novel ‘so sweet and sensitive that she feels influences more acutely than other people do’ becomes evil and voluptuous - Stoker uses this word to describe Lucy as many as four times within two pages, ‘the sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty and the purity to voluptuous wantonness’. The site of the burial place is a place of transgression from the feminine to the masculine for Lucy; it is at her tomb that Lucy re-awakens as a vampire. Her whole appearance changes, without any maternal instinct she preys on small children and is an aggressive hunter, as if she has been re-born; Lucy’s eyes, the windows to her soul, ‘the beautiful colour became livid, the eyes seemed to throw out sparks of hell-fire, the brows were wrinkled as though the folds of the flesh were the coils of Medusa’s snakes, and the lovely, blood stained mouth grew to an open square….as if ever a face meant death- if looks could kill- we saw it at that moment’. The transformation is quick and is a movement from extreme good to extreme evil. There is a link between the transition between life and death, between masculine and feminine at a place of burial, this verifies Victorian stereotypes of the weak women in neither novel do any male characters die so never get chance to move across from femininity to masculinity or vice versa as harshly as Lucy.

     The tomb and the grave, is a key setting in both novels, it is a place where the lines between life and death are blurred. It is where the body of Anne Catherick is buried, but as Laura. At the climax of the novel; the supposed dead Lady Glyde appears next to her very own grave – the dead and the living (the very same person) standing side by side. This is where the physical and the psychological play a part; Laura is identified as Anne by her clothes, by her appearances only. Marian and Hartright therefore become ‘accomplices of mad Anne Catherick, who claims the name, the place and the living personality of the dead Lady Glyde’  Laura has completely lost her identity; she claims ‘they tried to make me forget everything’ although her insistence of her true identity is pushed aside and ignored over her appearance- she is in Anne’s clothing therefore must be Anne. Collins draws light upon the thin line between the sane and insanity. Insanity has a strong historical link with females, female stepping out of place in society were reported as having hysteria and that the label of insanity more often than not were restrictions put on by men to keep unruly women in line which can be seen in Sir Percival’s treatment of Anne. Harker once again becomes the feminine male, he reported as hysteric and  labelled mentally ill and thus questions himself, ‘I feel my head spin round, and I do not know if it was all real or the dreaming of a madman. You know I have had a brain fever, and that is to be mad’. Harker’s so called brain fever places doubt in the reader’s mind; fact and fiction becomes intermingled, at this point in the novel even the reader is led to question the authenticity of Harker’s diary. It is the only source of information that Mina and the reader have to rely upon. It is at this point in the novel that the reader instead of using Harker as the assertive, trustworthy voice – turns to Mina.

 The main female characters often become frustrated with their gender throughout the course of the novels.

Both Mina and Marian become angry at their sex for restricting them, they are well aware of the social implications of being female in Victorian society. Nobody is more aware of the divide between the sexes than Marian, she orders Hartright not to ‘shrink under’ his feelings for Laura ‘like a woman’ but to ‘tear it out, trample it under like a man’, angry at Hartright for not using his male advantages. After all she would be expected to shrink under her feelings, though when she does, when she cries ‘miserable, weak, women’s tears of vexation and rage’ she is angry at herself for showing signs of weakness out of sheer frustration that her sex allows her to do nothing else. Gentle Laura, noticing her sister’s lapse of strength ‘put her handkerchief over my face, to hide for me the betrayal of my own weakness- the weakness of all others which she knew that I most despised’ Marian is an alternative of womankind; she defines a different type of femininity to that of the Victorian stereotype. Susan Balée suggests an alternative opening line to The Woman in White: that Hartright is instead a man with a woman’s patience and Marian is a woman with a man’s resolution.

   Dracula and The Woman in White are interested in examining what lies beneath appearances of gender, Collins adopts a more obvious approach by splitting two versions of the female in Laura and Marian – both in appearances of fair and dark and in characteristics, mentally weak and strong. Stoker combines these in the character of Mina – he does have a stereotypically feminine female that is Lucy who transgresses from being extremely feminine to extremely masculine. Both authors question the Victorian masculine and feminine roles and how males and females fit into them, and if there is any room for manoeuvring.

A little help from...

Stoker, Bram – Dracula (Penguin Popular Classics: 1994) London.

Collins, Wilkie – The Woman in White ed. Harvey Peter Sucksmith (Oxford University Press: 1975) New York and Toronto.

Woolf, Virginia – Orlando (Oxford World Classics: 1998) Oxford.

Moi, Tori -  Sexual/ Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (Routledge: 1999) London and New York

Jacobus, Mary – Reading Women: Essays in Feminist Criticism (Columbia University Press: 1986)

Balée, Susan – ‘Wilkie Collins and Surplus Women: The Case of Marian Halcombe’ Victorian Literature and Culture. (Cambridge University Press:1992) Vol. 20 pp.197-215

Miller, D.A – ‘Cage Aux Folles: Sensation and Gender in Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White’ Representation, No.14, The Making of the Modern Body: Sexuality and Society in the Nineteenth Century pp. 106-136 http://www.jstor.org/stable/2928437.

Demetrakopoulos, Stephanie – ‘Feminism, Sex Role Exchanges, and Other Subliminal Fantasies in Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”’ Frontiers: Journal of Women Studies (1977) Vol. 2, No. 3 pp.104-113

Craft, Christopher – “Kiss me with those red lips”: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ Representations No8. (1984) pp107-33 http:/www.jstor.org/stable/2928560